International Business Machines (IBM) Global Services in operating in a changing environment, Sine December 1996, when IBM established IBM Global Services (IGS), had achieved outstanding business result.IGS had grown faster than the industry, and IBM Global Services was then widely recognized as the largest computer services company in the world.
Being led by its CEO Mr. Gerstner, IGS is facing a changing tide where they must make a strategic decision to either continue to be “everything for everyone” or shift towards providing solutions for costumers facing E-Business challenges in sourcing and implementation.
The main issue to be resolved by John, chief financial officer of International Business Machines (IBM) was to create an enterprise wide strategy that would differentiate IBM Global services from its competition; Figure( 1) identifies the segments of IMB (hardware, global services, software, global financing, enterprise investments /other) and the company's percentage of revenue by segment.
Figure 1:
IBM Company's percentage of revenue by segments 2000 1999 1998
Hardware 42.7 43.3 44.2 Global services 37.5 36.7 35.4 Software 14.3 14.5 14.5 Global financing 3.9 3.6 3.5 Enterprise investments/other 1.6 1.9 2.4 Total 100 100 100
Source: IBM Annual Report (2001)
IBM Global Services is well positioned in the professional computer services industry includes three broad categories of services; processing services (data entry ,credit card authorization, billing